This week's theme is 'tropical' and this has to be the most rushed Illustration Friday I have done so far. I have to admit I have been prioritising OUIL504 over responsive for a while now and this is really starting to show. I am hoping to focus a lot on responsive once I have submitted my work for the 504 module so that I can begin to catch up. I have realised that my work for Responsive is suffering but seeing as this is a weekly competition, it defeats the point if I don’t get a submission entered on time. Its hard but I’m trying to be harsh on myself by forcing myself to enter what I have - I hope that this will encourage me allow more time each week to get this done to a higher standard and then I can submit something I am actually proud of.
In the mega crit, I received feedback saying it was great that I was trying new processes and materials each week and this is something I want to continue. This week I wanted to take an entirely digital approach using a Wacom tablet and Photoshop. Digital isn’t my strong point so maybe this wasn’t the best week to try this as I didn’t have loads of time to experiment.
Initial Ideas
Heat, climate, island, holiday, humid, resort, beach, sea,
Tropical animals - birds, fish, reptiles, mammals, scales, skin textures, patterns, insects,
Tropical plants - leaves, flowers, unusual shapes,
Flavour, drinks, fruit, cocktails, salads, coconuts.
I have decided to take forward the theme of tropical leaves because there are some really interesting shapes and patterns within this.
Roughs
I did my roughs using the Wacom tablet which was a challenge in itself. I think it must be my hand-eye coordination that is off but I can’t seem to draw with my hand while I’m looking at the screen. It only really works for me when I’m looking directly at the pen and I can see where I’m moving it. Anyway, these are the roughs I did which are based around making a pattern or simple line up of different leaves. As you can see, drawing with a Wacom really isn’t my thing.
Inspiration and Reference
I found some photos on Pinterest that I used to draw from, I tried to select leaves with interesting and eye-catching designs which I could try to simplify down to key shapes and patterns in my drawing. I am trying to keep this as simple as possible.
Drawing with a Wacom Tablet
It took a lot of attempts to get these shapes how they are now. I suppose this is quite a naive approach to drawing. Ive been planning on adding some really bright colours to exaggerate the colours found on plants in tropical climates.
Colour and Texture
I added basic colours to each leaf and used the hue/saturation levels to change it to a strong set of colours. These are like leaves from a very high saturation world. I added some mono print texture onto the background after changing it to black. I experimented with some other background colours and I think the purple one works nicely but I don’t think it particularly relates to the tropical theme. I settled with black because I felt this was the most high contrast and striking option. It reminded me of the colours of tropical themed parties like clothing and lighting, not that I really know a lot about that. I googled some images to help explain my thinking.
Pattern
With this in mind, I started thinking about pattern, which was one my my initial ideas which I decided against. I used the ‘Define Pattern’ tool on Photoshop to create these patterns and then shifted each row to ensure that all the colours didn’t run in straight lines. Thinking of the size of the square your image is shown in on Illustration Friday, I cropped these down so the leaves were more visible.
Submission
I submitted my design to the Illustration Friday website and it didn’t really look like any of the others on there. I am taking that as a good thing.
Evaluation
This piece of work is clearly rushed and I am disappointed in myself for leaving it to the last minute. However, I am also pleased to have entered something rather than nothing. there’s no point in doing the work after the deadline has passed. Seeing as I wasn’t planning initially to make this into a pattern, I didn’t really think about spacing too much. If I were to do this again, I would jumble up the pattern square so the leaves weren’t sitting in uniformed rows, it doesn’t reflect the freedom of nature and the life in tropical locations.
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